


Little Monster

by LadySalazar



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 14:40:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8894563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySalazar/pseuds/LadySalazar
Summary: During a mission to investigate the possibility of Voldemort gaining demonic support, a fight between Lily and James leads to a drunken Lily sleeping with a stranger… and unfortunately, Harry is very much his father’s child.  Dark themes.  AU oneshot.





	

_**Little Monster** _

 

_It does matter who your parents are._

 

If ever a male needed a reason to thank Merlin for his gender, Sirius Black figured the nightmare taking place in the cozy living room of Godric’s Hollow would work nicely. As an Auror, he saw some extremely nasty sights and he was mostly immunized to them by now, or so he’d decided a week and a half prior, digging through the remnants of Voldemort’s summer solstice revel. The vision of mutilated corpses both human and not, the reek of foul magic and already-rotting dead flesh – it had been enough to make his usually iron-stomached senior Auror partner spew his morning coffee. Sirius had managed not to.

 

This was worse.

 

He cringed as another unholy shriek of pain resounded, followed by a gush of bright red blood that splashed on the floor rug and pooled there, the rug already too drenched to absorb any more. Any minute now Alice would have to send him away to get more blood-replenishing potion; they only had a few vials left. Fortunately Sirius remembered the large stash of potion brewed only days ago, which he raided earlier on Alice’s first demand. Lily had to have known.

 

Lily screamed again. She screamed until she ran out of breath, until Alice said _push push Lily_ , and again, nothing came out but a small fountain of blood. Alice cursed and forced Lily to down her seventh vial of potion, her third vial over maximum daily dosage. The overdose could be dangerous, she said, but blood loss to this degree could be fatal. No one argued. The Auror and part-time Healer shouldn’t have been here to begin with, as she had given birth herself only yesterday, but Sirius thanked Merlin she was. Lily needed to be in St. Mungo’s Hospital, desperately, but the little monster in her gut wouldn’t accommodate that.

 

James was white as a sheet, clenching the hand Lily didn’t hold in a tight fist, and he watched Alice work with a haunted face. He wasn’t himself tonight, because Prongs didn’t feel fear but James was terrified.

 

Lily was dying.

 

It was wrong. Witches didn’t die in childbirth. Between calming draughts, pain-desensitizing solutions, and – in the very worst case – Wiggenweld healing drafts, witches rarely even experienced discomfort. But Lily was dying… the little monster in her gut was killing her. She spent nine months wincing at nothing, massaging her swollen stomach and murmuring to it that mummy wasn’t supposed to be on the menu. James and Sirius spent nine months rolling eyes and laughing behind her back.

 

Alice pleaded for one last deep breath, begged for the very last drops of strength. Sirius wondered despairingly where that strength was meant to come from in Lily’s limp exhausted body, and a shared glance with James indicated he felt the same. Lily moaned wearily but amazed them both by managing it. Three, two, one, push, and belying the three long hours of agony and effort it took to get this far, the little monster slid easily from its mother’s womb with a squelch, a naked ball painted red with blood. A boy. Sirius’ godson.

 

Sirius hated it.

 

Quickly tying off the umbilical cord, already chewed through by the little monster, Alice shoved it into Sirius’ arms and refocused all her attention on the witch that was wilting, completely spent. James cast a stabilis charm, something he had itched to do for hours, lending his wife his strength as Alice worked her magic. Sirius took the opportunity to study what he was honor-bound to act as second father to. Blood and flecks of uterine flesh matted a thick head of spiky dark hair that looked even more untidy than James’ mop, and after a quick cleansing spell the soft baby skin looked almost tanned instead of ruddy. The eyes that opened wide and blinked at him weren’t the blue of a normal newborn, either. They were Lily’s bright green, but for some reason he wanted to think they held a hint of red. Perhaps his judgment was impaired by the knowledge he was studying a little monster.

 

The little monster studied him right back, strangely quiet and with far too intelligent a gaze.

 

With a reluctant sigh, Sirius raised his hand to try and play with it some. The little monster caught one of his fingers, staring at it in abject baby fascination that made the painful knot in Sirius’ chest unwind a little. Then, he yelped and cursed and barely managed not to drop it as it sank teeth a newborn shouldn’t have had deep into the flesh of that finger. Little monster, indeed.

 

In the months that followed, Sirius’ scathing assessment grew to be shared by every poor sod that had the misfortune to come in close contact with baby Harry Potter. Only one person ever held the baby without getting bitten, and Sirius and James agreed that Lily had been bitten enough in carriage that she didn’t count.

 

Then Voldemort attacked, Lily and James died, and Sirius went to Azkaban, to live in constant nightmares of death and little monsters.

 

~

 

The Dursley family of number four, Privet Drive, would have been quite aggravated had a normal baby been dumped on their doorstep. As it was, only a deep-set worry over appearances kept Petunia Dursley from ranting angrily at the top of her shrill voice when she read the letter left behind by the freak headmaster. Those… people had left a freak baby on her doorstep.

 

By keeping Harry Potter, the letter promised, they would be guaranteed privacy and protection from the wizarding world. There would be no contact whatsoever until the time came for him to attend that school. Petunia held no doubt that her sister’s brat was every bit as abnormal as her sister, and felt no desire to house one of them under her roof, but what the letter promised was tempting. It wasn’t as if they had to care for it, only keep it, and there was a generous monetary dispensation for its welfare.

 

Petunia looked up from the letter with a scowl, fixing a disgusted gaze on the brat. She placed it on the table when she brought it in away from the prying eyes of the neighbors, and it hadn’t moved except to push itself into a sitting position, its bright-green-but-not eyes studying her with unnatural intensity for one that young. And the hair! It made Lily’s freak husband look well-groomed. It would be like a freak to meddle with electric sockets. But more than anything, Petunia was disconcerted by its silence. Children of fifteen months were not this quiet and well-behaved. It had to be a trick. She reached out and smacked it harshly, to destroy the freak baby’s façade of civility.

 

It blinked in surprise and childish anger, and an inhuman snarl was Petunia’s only warning before sharp teeth sank into her outstretched hand. She yowled in pain, and when earnest shaking failed to dislodge it, slapped the brat as hard as she could manage. Teeth were ripped free as it skidded across the table, toppling off the other side and landing hopefully painfully on the linoleum. Petunia cradled her bleeding hand, trapped somewhere between fury and utter disbelief. Unnatural freak, indeed. It bit her, and not only that, bit her hard enough to tear the skin.

 

The brat landed hard but quickly scrambled to all fours like a beast, still snarling at her with its bloody mouth and too-sharp teeth bared. Petunia nailed it with a kick to the forehead, the thick material of her house shoes preventing it from biting her foot as well, and yanked it up with her uninjured hand by a foot. She knew exactly what to do with the bloodthirsty abnormal brat.

 

Trotting quickly out of the kitchen, Petunia wrenched open the door to the cupboard under the stairs and bodily tossed the brat into it, taking a vicious satisfaction from the thump of freak colliding with cupboard wall as she slammed the door shut and locked it. Taking a deep breath, she stomped off to the bathroom to bandage her hand.

 

Inside the cupboard, Harry licked his bloody lips to distract himself from the throb of his already tender forehead and the heavy, thick stench of the bottles of cleaning supplies that permeated the stale air of the cupboard. That woman smelled like Mummy-Lily. She tasted similar, too, though her taste was duller, lacking the spice of power.

Harry would’ve tried not to hurt her like he tried not to hurt Mummy-Lily, but the woman hurt him first, and that meant she was an enemy.

 

The situation didn’t improve any when Vernon’s huge red face appeared in the cupboard, his gloved meaty hand seizing Harry to drag him out so Vernon could teach the freak that just looking at any of the Dursleys wrong was a crime for which he would pay. Vernon got violent, but Harry learned to get vicious.

 

By the time Harry was due for primary school, the Dursleys had long decided the best way to deal with their unnatural beast of a nephew was to stick him in his cupboard and leave him there, because a half-starved freak couldn’t fight as well as a grudgingly-fed freak. By the time Harry was due for primary school, their solution had produced an even larger problem for themselves: namely, that the brat had to go to school, despite being a vicious, feral wild-boy at the best of times. By the time Harry was due for primary school, any thoughts of his mum’s gentle remonstrations to be kind were long discarded.

 

Harry slinked into the classroom, sharp green eyes studying the bunches of five-year-olds chittering at each other, mostly dividing into groups by gender. He located a seat clear of anyone else and planted himself there, frightening off any that tried to sit by him with a snarl and glare full of venom. Petunia was giving Dudley a wet kiss and last word of advice _behave yourself dear and stay away from the freak_ which Harry could hear across the room, despite the din of children in between. He met his aunt’s last, frosty warning look with a toothy grin, and she flinched as she turned away. His relatives were deathly scared of him going to school for some reason, and he enjoyed the power it gave him.

 

Then Mrs. Maxwell shooed the last students into their seats, and school began. The teacher asked everyone to come close and sit in a circle, and asked everyone to introduce themselves. Harry liked neither, and managed to be the first student of the year to be put in time-out. He was allowed to return to his seat after the morning’s ‘fun time,’ after which they started letters and counting numbers. It wasn’t hard to pick up, but he found many of his classmates already knew both. Dudley already knew both, and the tongue the boy stuck out to taunt him made Harry snarl. Mrs. Maxwell stuck him in time-out again for his trouble. He was really starting to dislike the teacher. While standing in the corner meant he was away from the press of bodies, Harry learned the hard way not to present his back to anyone and being forced to do so didn’t help his temperament. Vernon was as stealthy as a rampaging rhino, but more than once Petunia had snuck up from behind and bashed him with her beloved frying pan.

 

His stomach complained loudly at that, reminded that it had been empty for over a week.

 

Several of the other students laughed at the sound. Harry heard especially Dudley’s taunting guffaw and snarled silently at the wall. His cousin never wanted for food; his cousin never wanted for anything. Harry remembered hearing through the cupboard door, the large dresser that wedged the cupboard shut, the hall and the kitchen wall as Petunia packed Dudley’s lunch, taking care to announce everything in her high-pitched voice so Harry’s aching belly knew what he was missing out on, because Harry had no lunch at all.

 

But Vernon and Petunia weren’t here, Harry thought, and with that a grin spread across his face.

 

Come lunchtime, though Mrs. Maxwell kept her beady eyes on him all morning, obviously spotting brewing trouble, she had no excuse to keep Harry away from the class. Unfortunately for the teacher, and fortunately for Harry, Dudley forgot his lunch pack and had to go back to the classroom to retrieve it; Mrs. Maxwell remained with the rest of the class while Dudley and a classmate went back to retrieve it, but for all her hawk-eyed regard she missed when Harry disappeared after the two.

 

The classmate Dudley befriended was as large as he was, but for all their collective girth they had virtually no muscle. Neither of them had any situational awareness, either; Harry padded right behind them silently and went unnoticed even when he had to dart in the door the fat classmate attempted to slam. Dudley grabbed his lunch while his friend poked around the other students’ cubbies, and when he turned around and saw Harry he froze.

 

Stay away from the freak, Petunia had said. Harry bared his teeth and smiled. “I eat your lunch or I eat you,” he said, and his cousin flinched because he knew better than to think he was bluffing.

 

“Freaks don’t get to eat,” Dudley retorted bravely, if unwisely, and he dropped the lunch bag and raised meaty fists in an attempt to defend himself as Harry lunged.

 

Sharp teeth chomped down on a fist, and Dudley howled in pain, trying to shake him off. Holding on with jaws of steel Harry planted his own fist in his cousin’s face, heard the crunch of breaking cartilage, and buried a knee in the larger boy’s stomach. Though the last hit did little damage, Dudley’s reflexive retreat led to him tripping and he fell, with all Harry’s weight on top of him, against the cubbies and slammed his head on the edge of the painted plywood. Dudley went limp, blood pooling in his hair, and Harry picked up the discarded lunch pack and left.

 

That was how Harry got expelled from Surrey Primary School on his first day.

 

Petunia, arriving immediately after receiving the urgent call from the principal, found her son being prepped for the ambulance, with a mangled hand, a nose they hoped was only crushed and not impacted, several bruised ribs, and a potentially damaging concussion. When she demanded to know what had happened to her darling Dudley, the school officials, many sporting bandaged limbs, pointed her to the isolation room, where Harry sat crouched and ready to spring, bloody and bristling with anger.

 

She escorted him out of the building as far as a block away and turned to face him, her expression a mask of hatred.

 

“You aren’t even a freak like your mother, you little monster,” she said, her voice jerking with the effort it took to keep from screaming in his face and causing even more of a scene. “You’re nothing more than a bloody vicious beast. Get out of my sight. Now. And never come back, because if I ever see you again, I’ll kill you.”

 

She returned to the school and to Dudley, and Harry took to the streets.

 

~

 

The dog-eat-dog savagery of street life suited Harry well. If he wanted something, he fought for it. If someone attacked him, he fought back. If he got hungry, he stole or killed something, from rats to cats to dogs to people. He wasn’t picky. He learned to be careful around enemies with knives and that if he could manage it the thick fleshy gap between the base of the neck and the collar bone made a much more secure hold than the arms or hands. If in doubt, always go for the throat. Harry was good at that.

 

Harry disliked pistols immensely, but it was thanks to one that he met Hermione.

 

She found him behind the trash bins at the park near her house, hissing and snarling as his fingers dug around in the pistol wound in his leg for the bullet lodged there. Aside from the stink and fresh wounds, nearly three years of filth and grime coated threadbare clothing and longish thick black hair hung lank and nasty. But despite being very smart for her age, Hermione was the first person his age that hadn’t fled in fear from the wild boy in years, and for just one reason.

 

“Ew! Do you know how unhygienic that is?” she squawked, pointing to the leg he was doctoring. “You’re going to get dirt in there, and then you’ll get infected!”

 

Harry looked up at her blankly for a second, and then went back to digging out the bullet, keeping half an eye on the intruder to his personal space. She looked like a typical schoolgirl, well-washed and well-fed with a bush of frizzy brown hair and buck teeth, but one could never be sure, and with his leg hurt he didn’t need trouble. She looked slightly ill as he groped around in the flesh of his thigh, baring his teeth in a grin when he found the bullet and removed it, and turned green when he yanked out the equally nasty shirt he’d swiped from his attacker to wrap the wound.

 

“Stop that!” she demanded, marching toward him with her hands on her hips. “That’s disgusting. It’s filthy, and you’re only going to make yourself sick – ow!” The exclamation came when Harry shoved her away, growling like a cornered animal. He would’ve punched her, but bad things tended to happen to street kids who picked on the school kids. “What was that for? I say, you shouldn’t be so mean. I’m only trying to help.”

 

“You shouldn’t be a shitface busybody bitch,” he snapped in reply. “Just go the hell away and it won’t matter how fucking mean I am.”

 

The girl gawked. “Mum would absolutely murder me if I talked like that. It’s disgraceful.” Harry snorted, and she got back on track. “But really, you should go to the hospital. Pistol injuries can get infected easily. I read about this case where someone had to have their leg amputated – that is, cut off – because they didn’t get it treated in time. It’s awful to consider.”

 

Harry blinked in response. As annoying as the girl was acting, she actually smelled sincere. He knew that ‘nice guys’ occasionally appeared on the streets and had met a few of them himself, but he never trusted them. They sounded concerned and caring, but their scent was laced with lies.

 

“I’m not going to a hospital,” he said flatly.

 

“But you must!”

 

“I don’t have to do a damn thing.” Harry appended this with a warning snarl, and the girl chewed on her lip in thought.

 

As she came to a decision, she stood up straighter and crossed her arms, with the effect of making her seem older and more severe. “If you won’t go to a hospital, then I want you to come home with me. If I get dirty, then Mrs. Dilly will take me home and I can let you in, and you can get cleaned up.”

 

In the end, Harry wasn’t sure how she talked him into it, but she did. With a satisfied smile, she introduced herself as Hermione Granger, pried his first name from him, and left to go get messy. Carefully staying out of sight and as silent as he could manage with his leg the way it was, he shadowed her and her babysitter down the road to her house. It wasn’t hard, as the half-deaf Mrs. Dilly spent the walk chastising Hermione at the top of her voice for dirtying her clothes.

 

Hermione sneaked to the back and beckoned Harry in, putting a finger to her lips in a shushing motion as they crept through the living room, crossing behind the recliner where Mrs. Dilly sat slumped over and dozing in front of the blaring TV. She giggled at his expression.

 

“Mrs. Dilly’s narcoleptic – I mean, she falls asleep quickly and suddenly when she’s not really careful. Just sit down in front of the television, and boom, she’s asleep.”

 

Harry nodded, thinking that sounded dangerous, and followed her into the bathroom. Hermione twiddled the knobs and measured out a cupful of thick oily liquid into the water flow, and a mound of white bubbles formed as the tub filled. He stuck a finger into it and sniffed the foam, catching an overpowering scent of cotton candy before he sneezed.

 

“It’s bubble-bath soap,” Hermione said, again looking concerned. “I hadn’t thought… some people are allergic, but I thought you could get the worst off before I washed your hair… Don’t look at me like that. Mum washes my hair, too. She says I don’t get all the shampoo out.”

 

“It smells,” Harry said, rubbing his nose.

 

Hermione scowled. “Yes, but you smell worse.” He took an investigative sniff of himself in response, frowning when he failed to notice anything particularly foul, and the girl huffed. “Of course you don’t smell yourself. You’re used to it. Now get in the tub.”

 

The bath was an interesting experience. The bubbles served dual purpose as soap and preserver of Hermione’s sense of propriety. Most of the grime was so stuck it took an unfair amount of scrubbing to dislodge it, leaving the naturally tan skin underneath pink and raw and Harry feeling awkwardly exposed. By the time he was clean to Hermione’s exacting standards, the water was a murky brown color and kept trying to clog as it drained. Looking at it, Harry felt amazed at just how much filth had stuck to him. Looking at him, Hermione was fascinated.

 

“You have tattoos!” she exclaimed.

 

He glanced at her askance. “No I don’t.”

 

“Yes you do!” She pointed, and he transferred his nonplussed stare to the twin dark red stripes that ran down his arms. Harry didn’t remember ever seeing them before, but he hadn’t been properly clean since he left Privet Drive. Maybe they just appeared somehow. Weird, but he never bothered with tattoos. He shrugged.

 

“I guess I do.”

 

“Mum and Dad would be furious if I ever got a tattoo.” At this, Hermione looked caught between impressed and disapproving. “I read that it’s supposed to be really painful, especially if you hate needles, because they have to impale you repeatedly to put the ink in.” Harry guessed that impale meant ‘to stick something really sharp into.’ “And they’re supposed to fade over time and get dull and ugly. I don’t think I ever want one. But yours are kind of pretty.”

 

“Pretty?” he repeated indignantly. He preferred being encrusted with dirt to being pretty.

 

“Yes, pretty. They match your eyes – they’re green but reddish like the tattoos. You look a lot nicer clean, you know.”

 

She grinned at him and then skipped over to the tub, rinsing out the last of the bubble-bath water and setting the faucet to run again. The towel wrapped around his waist, he leaned over until his head was thoroughly soaked –or as soaked as it could get, as it was so oily, it was almost waterproof. Hermione kept making gagging, disgusted noises as she massaged the shampoo in, commenting that the state of his hair was ‘abominable,’ which must have been a long way of saying gross, Harry figured. It took several rounds of shampoo to satisfy her, but he didn’t complain, since it felt rather good.

 

Afterward, with his hair free of filth and swiftly drying, Hermione gawked at him again. “Your hair is weird, too. I thought the muck was responsible for how it clumped, but it’s like that naturally. Thick, spiky clumps of long black hair. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

 

Harry had never seen anyone so fascinated with him; in fact, the schoolgirl was the first person since his distant memories of his mother to focus on him without varyingly-concealed dislike. She washed him, fed him, and while he was distracted trashed his nasty clothes, inciting an argument that left him gnashing his teeth against the urge to take a bite out of her as he pulled on the clean T-shirt and ball-shorts she gave him. Though made for a girl, they fit better than the three-years-old ragged hand-me-downs from Dudley ever had.

 

Then she heard the slam of a car door out front, paled and rushed him to the back. Harry left feeling strange, and not just because he was several pounds lighter than when he arrived.

 

It was curiosity that led Harry to the park the next day, where he planted himself out of sight and watched to see if the bushy-haired schoolgirl would show up again. She did, and after looking around for a moment and pouting, she pulled out a thick brick of a book and began to read. After a few minutes, Mrs. Dilly marched over to a huddle of similarly old and half-deaf women and joined in their conversation in her loud voice. Hermione glanced up at her and sighed, eyes flickering over the playground again, this time with some trepidation as they landed on her fellow school kids. Her fingers clenched the book tightly.

 

No one was watching, so Harry slipped from his hiding place and sneaked up behind her. Poking her to get her attention, he clamped his hand over her mouth in order to stifle her startled cry. She struggled and tried to bite, and Harry snickered as he released her. His relatives had always ranted that biting was something only animals did, and here a prissy schoolgirl did it… even if she was pathetic at it. It didn’t even leave indentations.

 

“Harry?” she exclaimed, twisting around to look at him. “You came back!” She tackled him in a hug, or tried to, because he flinched back violently, stepping out of range. It was that or slug her.

 

“I wonder why,” he said aloud, and she flushed.

 

“You shouldn’t have sneaked up on me, then,” she said, ducking down to reclaim the book she dropped in her moment of surprise. “You could have said ‘Hey Hermione’ like a normal person instead of poking me, you know.”

 

Harry snorted, crossing his arms and feeling out of place. “I’m not a bleeding schoolboy, Hermione. If you’re so arsed about normal, look somewhere else.” He studied the thick book, recognizing letters from his single class but not stringing them together. “What’s that, anyway?”

 

Hermione looked down, a slight tinge of pink rising in her cheeks. “Oh, it’s…” She seemed almost tongue-tied, which was strange, considering yesterday she never quieted. “It’s…” Then she gave up and shoved the title page in his face. He backed away, giving it and her a blank look. She frowned, appearing slightly hurt.

 

“Shoving the damn thing in my face doesn’t tell me what it says,” he said defensively in response.

 

She blinked at that, and then her mouth opened in surprise. “You can’t read?” The schoolgirl couldn’t have looked more horrified if the world had come to an end. “That’s absolutely horrid. Haven’t you ever gone to school? What will you ever do with your life without an education? You simply must-”

 

The snarl that escaped Harry’s mouth stopped her cold. Hermione looked at him uncertainly, he glowered back at her, and they might have had an argument and things might have ended right then and there had not some of the schoolboys been distracted from their games by Hermione’s outburst.

 

“Do you ever get tired of lecturing people about reading, beaver teeth?” said one, with all of an eight-year-old’s disgust in his drawl. “I mean, who really cares? It’s not like it matters, unless you want to suck up to the teacher.”

 

“That’s all beaver teeth is good for,” sing-songed another, bouncing with one hand stretched high in the air. “Pick me, pick me! I know the answer! Pick me!”

 

“Talk about sucking up!” the first interjected, approaching with an incredulous expression. “That’s the same book Mrs. Schilling was reading during recess last week. About Frobo the bobbit and Santa’s elves.” He rolled his eyes in Harry’s direction. “You should stay away from her. She’ll give you brain-cooties and then you’ll be sitting up front giving the teacher googly-eyes too.”

 

“It’s Frodo the hobbit and they’re called the Eldar, you jerk!” Hermione shouted at him, her face red and eyes filling with tears; Harry stared at her in surprise, taken aback by how upset she became. “And I do not have cooties! Just because I like to learn doesn’t make me weird or a suck up!”

 

The schoolboy ignored her, sizing up Harry instead. “You’re kind of small, aren’t you? But we could do with another player. Want to play basketball? Then we’d have enough for two teams.”

 

Harry was as clueless about basketball as he was of reading, but he found himself studying the two school kids with sudden insight. Hermione was too schoolgirly even for the school kids, so desperate for friends that she reached out to a street rat in the hope of acceptance. She stared at him with wounded eyes that begged him not to leave her but was too prideful to speak.

 

“Have you ever invited her to play?” Harry asked slowly, not taking his eyes from the schoolgirl.

 

“Invite beaver teeth to play basketball?” the boy scoffed. “Why would I do that? Nerd-brains like her don’t get to play sports.”

 

_And freaks don’t get to eat_ , Harry heard in the echoes of the schoolboy’s words, and a fist clenched. He trotted over to the other boy, heard behind him a betrayed whimper, and slammed that fist directly up into the boy’s chin. While he took care to pull the punch, keeping in mind that he was standing in the middle of a playground with pissy school kids and pissier normal adults, the boy still raised several inches into the air and flew back, landing crumpled in the dust. Harry heard him crying and sputtering and demanding _what was that for_ and deliberately turned his back. Hermione gaped at him open-mouthed.

 

“What was that?” she managed after a moment of silent mouthing.

 

“What you should’ve done to that fuckwit instead of crying,” he said, “though I’m a lot better at it. You don’t have beaver teeth, you know. You can’t bite worth a damn.”

 

Hermione laughed, Harry crossed his arms, and the two of them struck up a conversation that lasted until Mrs. Dilly grew tired of gossiping with her fellow old fogeys and decided it was time her charge headed back home. The schoolgirl extended an invitation to drop by her house the next day, and a strange sort of friendship was born.

 

~

 

The next few years passed in relative calm. Hermione continued to be mind-bogglingly schoolgirly and Harry continued to run the streets, but the girl stuck to her first friend like a burr despite what her fellow school kids said and he grew attached to the first person since his shadowy memories of green eyes and red hair and a kind smile to look at him with anything but disdain and disgust. Harry was introduced to her parents on her ninth birthday, a few months after they met, and only their reluctance to ruin her clear happiness kept it from becoming an explosive affair.

 

Mrs. Granger disapproved of her daughter involving herself with a street tramp, and Mr. Granger remembered an old article in the _London Times_ about a boy named Harry who put his cousin in the hospital the first day of primary school. Harry saw pissy self-important and arrogant ‘respectable’ adults, and smelling their distrust and dislike, he naturally compared them to the other ‘respectable’ adults he knew: the Dursleys. Fortunately, the Grangers weren’t the Dursleys, and for Hermione’s sake they were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

 

It was this open-mindedness that led him to their house in July of 1991, gripping a parchment envelope addressed in green ink. The rudimentary literacy pounded into his head through Hermione’s mammoth efforts allowed him to painstakingly decipher the handwriting on the front, which spelled out:

 

Mr. H. Potter

Behind the Second Trash Can

The Alley Between Occanery Street and West Marigold Lane

London, England

 

The contents, however, were written in a stylish cursive, and it made Harry’s head hurt to look at it too long. Without mentioning the knee-jerk reaction of alarm he had upon liberating the letter from the mangled feathery corpse of the messenger owl (which served as a quick if messy snack as he slowly sounded out the words, stringing the syllables together until the meaning clicked) and finding the uncannily unnervingly precise address was his, of all people, it was a good enough excuse for him to seek out the assistance of the schoolgirl. On the seal of the rough, thick parchment envelope a great coat of arms was embossed, that of a snake, lion, badger and eagle inscribed about an emboldened capital H. Harry didn’t recognize the seal, but he hoped Hermione, given her astounding schoolgirliness, might know what it was. All those books had to serve some use.

 

Someone knew where he slept, for fuck’s sake. That was damn scary.

 

Especially, Harry thought uneasily, considering he had only ‘moved’ there the night before.

 

He looked back and forth down the street. It was clear, given the early hour, and he darted over to the house’s side, scaling it with the ease that experience brought. Steadying himself on the sill outside Hermione’s room, Harry threaded his fingers in the crack the girl always left instead of closing the window properly and forced it up so he could crawl in. The schoolgirl was still curled up in bed, snoring lightly, a large book under her pillow, and Harry snickered quietly. He didn’t know if it was just the schoolgirl or just him, but Hermione needed more sleep in one week than Harry needed in two.

 

Either way, Hermione needed to wake up. It was going on five in the morning, and Mr. and Mrs. Granger were already moving on the floor below. Mrs. Granger was busy preparing breakfast, the scent of which was making Harry’s stomach grumble, while if he listened, Mr. Granger’s slightly off-key voice could be heard from the downstairs shower. They usually left for their dental practice around six, the same time Mrs. Dilly arrived to watch Hermione.

 

Harry poked the slumbering girl. She murmured something in her sleep and rolled over so that she faced away from him. He poked her again, harder, and she jerked, roused, irritation showing in her sleep-fogged brown eyes.

 

“I’m awake, I’m awake,” she muttered, clearly about to drop off again. Harry growled, and Hermione shook herself, blinking at him. “Harry? What are you doing here?” He shoved the letter at her, and she stared at it dumbly for several seconds before taking it. She gawked at the green ink and then the seal, and then her face lit up in incredulous joy – which was Harry’s only warning before the schoolgirl squealed loudly and leapt from the bed, yelling. “Mum! Dad! Come see! Harry’s got a Hogwarts letter!”

 

He jumped off the bed and followed her, wondering what on earth Hogwarts was and why Hermione was so excited about it. As it turned at, Hogwarts was a school; though why a prestigious boarding school sent an invitation to a street kid who could barely read and had only attended one day of school all his life, Harry had no idea. Then, almost abashedly, the schoolgirl dropped the bombshell – Hogwarts was a school of magic. She rushed to explain about how the Deputy Headmistress had come herself to prove that the letter wasn’t a fraud, and how she’d changed into a tabby cat and back and made the coffee table in the living room do a tap dance, and how they’d gone to a magic street with broomsticks and cauldrons and wands and and and…

 

Harry blinked at her, and cut the girl off with a simple statement. “I know.”

 

“-and Harry, I know it sounds unbelievable, but – what?” Hermione fell silent in surprise.

 

“You know about magic, Harry?” Mr. Granger asked, voicing the question for his entire family.

 

He shrugged. “Mum and Dad were magical. I don’t remember much… I can remember Dad turning into a deer, and Mum making lights. And I can remember how they died. The relatives told me they died in a car crash, but to hell with that. They didn’t even have a damn car. They were killed.”

 

Mrs. Granger gave him her customary severe look at his language, but didn’t chastise him, since that was rather tame for a reference to ‘the relatives’ the Dursleys. “Why would your relatives lie to you?” she asked instead. “Maybe they just didn’t want to bother you with the knowledge until you were older.”

 

“They didn’t care any about informing me that Mum was a freak the world was better off without,” Harry rejoined flatly, trying not to snarl at the woman. Damn respectable people thought that anyone not street was at worst misunderstood. Hermione’s mother would have replied, but Mr. Granger sensed the conflict waiting to happen and raised a hand to halt her.

 

“Your parents were killed by dark wizard but you survived?” Hermione whispered, glancing back down at the letter in a moment of surprise and then staring him in sudden awe. “You’re not just Harry Potter, you’re _the_ Harry Potter. Defeater of the Dark Lord Voldemort! I’ve read all about you; so far, you’ve been featured in _The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts_ , _Modern Magical History_ , and my History of Magic textbook.”

 

“Am I?” Harry repeated dazedly. People had written books about him? It was hard to tell who was more surprised: Hermione, Harry himself, or Mrs. Granger. Mr. Granger looked bemused, but stifled a laugh at his wife’s expression.

 

“Hermione’s been eager to return to Diagon Alley since Professor McGonagall took us,” he said, taking Harry’s letter from his daughter and scanning over the contents that he had yet to have read to him. “If you’re interested we can take you with us. I’m sure there must be some fund set up for – well, nevermind.” Mr. Granger’s eyes went wide. “Your tuition for seven years has already been paid, and your parents set up a trust fund for other living expenses.”

 

Harry stared at the man in disbelief. “ _Why_ would I want to go to school?” he said, disgust evident in his tone. “I’m not a sissy-fuck little school kid. I don’t care about being bloody respectable.”

 

Hermione’s face fell and hurt flickered in her eyes. Harry, focused on her father, missed it, but Mr. Granger noticed. “Your parents obviously wanted you to, or they wouldn’t have prepaid your tuition ten years in advance,” said the dentist. “Not to mention, Hermione is going, and I think she hoped you would go with her. Hogwarts is a boarding school, so if you don’t go you won’t see each other again until Christmas.”

 

“Like I care,” he snorted, but as he crossed his arms Harry sneaked a glance at the schoolgirl and scowled, far angrier than he wanted to admit. It figured the blasted schoolgirl would up and go off to a boarding school. It was too much to ask for her not to go schmooze with more of her ultra-brainy respectable type. All she ever cared about brains and lessons and education anyway. He turned to stalk off, and again everything might have ended there, had Mr. Granger not decided his daughter’s friendship was more important than misgivings that hadn’t borne fruit.

 

“We’ll be heading back to Diagon Alley on Sunday,” he said to Harry’s back. He heard Mrs. Granger gasp in surprise. “If you decide to consider attending, be here then.”

 

Harry snarled loudly, not deigning to reply.

 

Then Sunday came, and a sulking, sour, and stubbornly silent Harry appeared in the Grangers’ driveway in time to accompany them to Diagon Alley. Throughout the entire wild day, Hermione’s bright smile never once dimmed.

 

~

 

For the first time since Surrey Primary, Harry was going to school, and it was every bit as nightmarish as he imagined. And worse. The train ride had been far too long in a far too confined space and too many asshole school kids kept popping up to check out the Boy Who Lived; one particular asshole, one Draco Malfoy, owed Hermione his life already, because if it weren’t for her Harry would’ve killed him where he stood. Then they had to stand in line and let a hat decide their ‘house’ for the rest of their schooling – though he would never tell anyone, he’d swallowed a knot of relief when Hermione somehow was sent to Gryffindor, the ‘house of the brave,’ over Ravenclaw, the ‘house of the brainy.’ He wasn’t sure how that had happened, but it was the first lucky break he received since stepping onto platform nine and three-quarters.

 

Then the deputy headmistress, a straight, severe witch with a painfully apparent stick shoved up her arse, called him forward for Harry’s own trial with the hat, and only his stubborn pride prevented him from haring away from the collective gaze of every single person in the Great Hall.

 

As he stepped forward, whispers broke out from every corner, bombarding him in his unnerved state.

 

“That’s Harry Potter?”

 

“Kinda small, isn’t he?”

 

“What’s with those marks on his face?”

 

“Forget the marks, do you see his scar?”

 

“Forget his scar,” one distinctly female voice said, “what’s with his hair?”

 

The last thing he saw as he sat was a hall full of school kids craning to get a good look at him.

 


End file.
